


Shrike

by Good0mens



Series: Beyond Measure and Reason [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asshole!Nicky, Bottom Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Getting Together, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, Light Angst, M/M, Malta is the centre of it all and everything else progresses around it, Mutual Pining, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova is a Little Shit, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Rough Sex, Top Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, What Happened in Malta (The Old Guard), dumbassery, im sure it makes sense, in this universe at least, it jumps back and forth, they're just being dumb about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:35:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27967673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good0mens/pseuds/Good0mens
Summary: "A few hundred steps from the gates, an arrow flies through the air and pierces Nicolò’s throat, the pointed tip ripping through his jugular between one blink and the next. He falls backward, choking on his own blood while his fellow crusaders march onward to the wall.He dies there, too ashamed to offer himself up to God, deciding instead to let his soul rot into the ground, let his body become a home to the insects and the flies.(In another universe, the archer is jostled at the last second and the arrow fails to find its mark. Yusuf al-Kaysani meets you at the wall. You kill each other, and then rise up from the dead and repeat the process.)"A story about forgiveness and letting go, in three parts.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Beyond Measure and Reason [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048336
Comments: 188
Kudos: 444





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all!
> 
> Firstly, if you haven't read the first installment of this series, I recommend that you do, because this might not make a lot of sense without the context!  
> Secondly, for those of you that have, welcome back! This is a bit of a change in pace and prose from BMAR, so I hope you like it!
> 
> You can listen to the playlist for this fic [here.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4mw1HA3cPVIiLwC9JZtQiN?si=HNnI2Tu-QsewcHd0acw3iw) it's basically what I've been playing on repeat while writing this fic

_Starved and sweltering from the stifling heat, Nicolò di Genova marches forward with the invading army through the sand, each step more difficult than the last. He doesn’t feel the gilded glory that was promised to him and his comrades, approaching the gates of Jerusalem. He feels like an intruder, raking filth onto the holy land._

_He knows the words: Deus Vult: God wills it. He doesn’t feel them._

_A few hundred steps from the gates, an arrow flies through the air and pierces Nicolò’s throat, the pointed tip ripping through his jugular between one blink and the next. He falls backward, choking on his own blood while his fellow crusaders march onward to the wall._

_He dies there, too ashamed to offer himself up to God, deciding instead to let his soul rot into the ground, let his body become a home to the insects and the flies._

_(In another universe, the archer is jostled at the last second and the arrow fails to find its mark. Yusuf al-Kaysani meets you at the wall. You kill each other, and then rise up from the dead and repeat the process.)_

_Nicolò awakens an indeterminate amount of time later, the arrow pushed out from his undamaged skin. Jerusalem is burning, and its people slaughtered like lambs._

_He is completely alone._

* * *

“Fuck!” Nicky swears as his spine collides with the knob on the door.

The noise is quickly swallowed up by Joe’s mouth, insistent and rough, his beard scraping against Nicky’s face. Nicky can taste the Maltese sea on him as he licks the salt from his upper lip. There are hands running down his body, gripping his hips to hold him against the door.

Nicky’s fingers are buried in Yusuf’s tight curls, and he gets even for the doorknob jab by yanking on the strands. When Yusuf groans, clearly enjoying the sting, Nicky does it again and bites his bottom lip for good measure.

Yusuf rips his mouth from Nicky’s and starts devouring his neck. Nicky thumps his head back against the door soundly, holding Joe’s head against his skin while he nips at the jut of his collarbone, making and remaking bruises that heal far too quickly. He pushes his hips against Joe’s and groans when he feels how hard Joe is under his pants.

Joe pulls back far enough to look at him.

“ _Little shrike_ , giving up so easily?” he teases, eyes dark with arousal.

He’s taken to calling Nicky that, _little butcherbird,_ _for the way you cracked my skull open when we met – and that nose, of course._

Nicky hates the way it makes him feel weak, makes him want to drop to his knees and _beg,_ so he shuts Joe up with another kiss.

* * *

_He walks. He isn’t sure of his destination, only that he has to continue his journey as far from that place as his legs will carry him. He can’t count the amount of times he dies from exposure, from starvation. Stops being able to tell the difference soon enough._

_In his dreams, Nicolò sees flashes of faces and people he doesn’t recognise. Two women, somewhere far from here – cold. And a man with obsidian eyes. The man intrigues him, with his anger and his desperation, because it feels achingly similar to his own._

_Perhaps it is God, looking upon them with his divine rage – but no, it can’t be. God doesn’t feel despair. That is reserved for mere mortals, and whatever sorry being Nicolò has become._

_(In another universe, he soothes your anger, and you soothe his. You both learn to become something more – in another universe, you are golden.)_

* * *

“Come _on_ ,” Nicky groans, pushing his hips down onto Joe’s fingers. He’s got three of them in Nicky, and its too much and not enough, it’ll never be enough-

“All this time, and you’ve never learned any patience,” Joe mocks, but he removes his fingers anyway, before hoisting Nicky’s legs up around his legs. They really should have moved to the bed, but Nicky is afraid if they pause now, Joe will realise what a fucking terrible mistake this is and stop and that’s the last thing he wants.

 _I have waited hundreds of years for this_ , _for you_ , Nicolò wants to say, but it’s swallowed up by a long moan as Joe lines his cock up with Nicky’s entrance and sinks inside.

It’s probably for the best; this is not the culmination of years of pining, the beautiful crest of two souls joining after so many years. This is Joe and Nicky, exhausted and in need of release, finding it in each other’s bodies for one glorious, foolish moment.

Joe rotates his hips, pushing further into Nicky with short, aborted thrusts. It’s careful and controlled, almost _tender_ , as Nicky’s body yields easily to Joe’s, and opens up for him.

But Nicky can’t ignore the voice echoing in his head that says this isn’t for him, he’s not allowed to have this, he doesn’t deserve this kindness _._ So he moves his hands from Joe’s hand to his shoulders and uses it as leverage to shove himself all the way onto Joe’s cock, pushing all the air from his lungs from the tremendous feeling of _fullness_ that overtakes him.

Joe grunts in surprise, those dark eyes going wide as he’s suddenly encased in Nicky’s warmth. He leans forward and knocks his forehead against Nicky’s, breathing the same desperate air, entirely still for one resplendent moment as they get used to each other’s bodies.

* * *

_In the distance, he sees it: a village engulfed in flames._

_Before he’s aware of it, his legs are moving, a little faster each time his feet strike the ground, until he’s tearing through hot sand on bare feet – they’d worn through roughly a month into their journey to the holy lands – heart thumping with adrenaline as he reaches the first house._

_The templar cross, ugly and torn across a banner flying high in the air, higher than the flames. Nicolò stops dead, dread creeping into his stomach._

_A heavy beat passes as he stares. Then the shriek of a baby punctures the air and Nicolò doesn’t think, just acts, pulls a broadsword from a man on his horse and slaughters any knight that tries to stop him as he makes his way into the burning house._

_He succeeds in rescuing the mother and her child; they make it out just before the structure can collapse onto itself. Only a handful of other people in the village survive._

_She takes one look at him, still draped in the armour of men he no longer sides with, and spits in his face._

* * *

“ _Come on_ ,” Nicky repeats breathlessly, unable to bear the intensity of Joe’s gaze, challenge written into every line of his body, “fuck me like you mean it.”

Joe’s eyes flash dangerously. He shifts his grip to grasp one of Nicky’s thighs before drawing himself out of Nicky and plunging back inside, deep and hard enough to pull a shout from Nicky.

He does it again, pushes up into Nicky while dragging his body down, forcing pathetic gasps and moans out of Nicky’s mouth, until he’s shaking, gripping Joe’s shoulders for something to hold onto while Joe drives into him over and over, undoing and remaking him with each thrust.

He closes his eyes at some point, pinches them shut against the onslaught of sensation. His stomach is cramping up from holding himself in this position, and his legs ache, but it’s all secondary to the feeling of Joe inside of him, to the thick, frenzied slide of his cock against his prostate.

“Look at me,” Joe commands roughly, the dulcet tones of his voice making Nicky shiver.

When Nicky does, he draws in an uneven breath.

* * *

_The first time they meet isn’t until after Nicolò learns the word shak; to doubt. He drapes himself in it, with morals held loosely in his blood soaked hands. Think predator; now think prey. He is a songbird to shak, an unbeliever looking for redemption._

_He knows many words now, in a language so different from his mother tongue, tearing through them and tripping over them in a futile attempt to give voice to his need for forgiveness._

_He has just visited his mother’s grave, the soil still freshly turned where they buried her, when he sees him._

_Nicolò recognises his eyes, first. Then the fury._

_He spits something at Nicolò, before he runs Nicolò through with his saif. Nicolò returns the favour by breaking a rock against the man’s head before he can pass out from blood loss._

_(Somewhere, in another life, Yusuf is making your mother’s focaccia bread. He feeds it to you, olive oil dripping from his fingertips, and chases the taste with his lips.)_

_He’s not waiting for Nicolò when he gasps back awake._

* * *

One of Joe’s hands cradles the back of Nicky’s neck, keeping him still while he slows his thrust to a deep, dirty roll of his hips. Joe’s eyes are hooded, almost drowsy, unfocused as he bites his lip and drives into Nicky with purpose.

It’s so much, too much, Joe looking at him hungrily even as he takes his fill of Nicky, the intensity of his thrusts, and Nicky can only hold on and try not to break apart under him.

He hauls Joe back in for another kiss, sloppy and with too much teeth to be good except for the fact that it’s _Joe_ , and he can’t get enough of it. When they pull apart, Nicky slides his fingers back into Joe’s hair and _pulls,_ grinning ferally at the way Joe snaps his hips up in response.

* * *

_Yusuf Al-Kaysani is the bane of Nicolò’s existence, a walking reminder of the worst parts of himself. He brings out an ire in Nicolò, like an old scab retorn open under his infuriating gaze alone. Some hurts just don’t heal properly, no matter how unbreakable his body is._

_He kills Yusuf, once, while he is praying. It is petty, borne of his own vindictiveness over his lost faith. He knows he’s crossed a line when he doesn’t see or hear from Yusuf for years afterward, when Andromache and Quynh come looking for him._

_(In another life, you keep your faith in him, in his endless forgiveness and his unwavering compassion. He keeps his in a wedding band that you slipped on his finger between sun-drenched kisses.)_

* * *

Joe moves his hand from Nicky’s neck down to his cock, and Nicky hisses as his too-dry palm wraps around it and starts stroking in time with the rhythm of his cock. It hurts a little, the pain sharp against the dull throb of pleasure in his belly, but Nicky only groans, pre-come spurting out from the head.

“This is how I mean it,” Joe murmurs lowly, eyes boring right into Nicky’s fucking soul.

Nicky can’t take it any longer. He shudders apart in Joe’s arms, coming white streaks into Joe’s hand, as Joe fucks him through it. He doesn’t look away from Joe the entire time, watching the way he drinks up Nicky’s face, eyes raking over his lips, the flush he’s sure is blotching his face red, his throat working to get more air in.

* * *

_A splinter of lightning fractures the sky, charging the air around them, followed by a terrible, thundering boom. The current is beating against the ship, rocking them in a sickening cradle._

_Andromache is watching the waves like they might deliver Quynh back, just as effortlessly as they took her._

_“You should have let me go! I could have rescued her,” Yusuf shouts, thumping his fists against Nicolò’s chest._

_“You would have been lost, too. And where would that leave me?” Nicolò counters, voice trembling, exposed._

_It’s selfish, and he hates himself for it, but it’s true._

_Because here is the crux of it; here is the crack of lightning, the crack in his chassis, that Nicolò is terrified of._

_Here is the poison root of their enmity, where nothing can grow from or change:_

_Nicolò loves him far more than he can bear._

* * *

Joe pauses to watch as Nicky recovers from his orgasm.

“My _little shrike_ ,” he whispers, awed, tracing a finger down Nicky’s crooked nose to his lips.

Nicky opens his mouth dutifully, and Joe immediately presses two fingers inside. Nicky laves his tongue over the digits, groaning when he tastes his own come against Joe’s skin.

“Is _this_ all I had to do to get you to stop fighting me?” Joe laughs gently, “If I had known an orgasm would make you this pliant I would have done it a very long time ago.”

Nicky flushes and rolls his eyes, tries to ignore the stab of _what if_ in his gut and the waver in Joe’s voice that sounds too much like regret. He nips Joe’s fingers in retaliation, and Joe slips them out. He cups Nicky’s jaw to kiss him again, taking Nicky’s bottom lip between his own, mouths sliding over each other slowly.

* * *

_“You had no right,” Joe accuses darkly, shaking with anger._

_“You were going to run yourself into the ground, Yusuf. The people there don’t know what they are fighting for, neither side was-”_

_“Of course you would say that,” Joe scoffs._

_Nicky recoils, as if struck. “This is different, you know it is.”_

_“Is it? Let’s be honest, Nicolò, the only thing you know how to do is leave,” Joe spits, hurt and anger laced like poison on his tongue._

_Nicky knows he’s not just talking about Jerusalem, and he’s far too tired to fight with him. So he turns on his heel and walks out the door._

* * *

Joe picks his thrusts back up again, pulling more desperate sounds from Nicky as his abused prostate is hit on every deep press of Joe’s cock inside him. Joe is clinging to him like he can’t bear to be separate from him again, and Nicky has to remind himself that this isn’t his to have, that _Joe_ isn’t his to have.

Joe groans into his mouth as he pushes into Nicky one more time and comes, chest heaving as he struggles to keep holding Nicky up while he empties himself inside him.

Nicky doesn’t know why, but when Joe kisses the mole next to Nicky’s mouth, it feels like goodbye.

* * *

_“There you are, my little shrike,” Joe murmurs in Arabic as Nicky bursts through the door to Merrick’s lab._

_He shoots the woman in the lab coat as soon as he spots her, before making his way over to Joe and undoing the straps on his restraints._

_“You didn’t have to get yourself kidnapped just to get my attention,” Nicky jokes, but his eyes are zeroing in on the blood on his neck, the bags under his eyes. It took him too long to find them._

_“You weren’t answering my calls,” Joe shrugs; his tone is jovial, but he pins Nicky with a look that feels too accusatory for Nicky to deal with right now._

_He glances past Joe to Booker, and something in his eyes must give his anger away because Joe places a hand on his arm and squeezes. Nicky looks back down at him and Joe shakes his head._

_Why does his forgiveness extend so easily to everyone but Nicolò?_

* * *

Joe is passed out on the bed, still naked, face soft in sleep. He’d cleaned Nicky and him up with a washcloth before all but dragging Nicky into the bed with him, wrapping his arms around him.

He shouldn’t have let himself have this. Because now he knows what it’s like, and he can already feel the way his body craves _more_ , more of Joe, more of his touch and his praise and his gaze.

Nicky has been a shrike to shak for so long, he doesn’t know how to believe anymore. And he certainly won’t drag Joe down with him.

So before Joe can wake, Nicolò leaves, heart breaking with the dawn, and doesn’t look back.

* * *

_(somewhere, in another life, you are more than this)_

_The last thing he sees is Keane’s determined expression and the barrel of the gun. He hears Joe’s animalistic shout just before everything goes dark._

_When he gasps back awake, Joe’s thumb is brushing Nicolò’s pulse and he’s looking down at him like he’s something precious, something breakable and worthy._

_-_

_(somewhere, in another life, you are allowed to love him)_

_Nicolò sees the distraught, exhausted look on Joe’s face after he snaps Keane’s neck._

_“You shot Nicky,” he heard Joe whisper to him just moments before, “you shouldn’t have done that.”_

_This is what Nicolò does; his touch corrupts, his very existence brings about ruin._

_-_

_(somewhere, in another life, he-)_

_“- loves you, you know.”_

_“I know.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At Copley’s, Nicky untangles himself from Joe’s embrace as soon as he falls asleep. It’s far too easy to let himself stay there, held in the warmth of Joe’s arms, but Nicky has been denying himself for so long it’s as natural as breathing.
> 
> So instead he holds an unlit cigarette between his fingers, watching Joe from across the room as the man rolls onto his stomach on the couch. In his other hand, Nicky is playing with a lighter, listening to the snick of the flame as he thumbs the button, then releases it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not me, adding a third chapter to this because Nicky was more stubborn than I gave him credit for. Oops, uhh sorry?

_A brief interlude:_

_It is an ancient longing, this._

_He didn’t know the dreams stopped when they met. Didn’t know until he met Andromache and she told it to him, because he’d been dreaming of Yusuf almost every night, of the arch of his back as he sat ṣalāt al-maġrib against the fading light of day, of the choked gasp he made when Nicolò buried the blade next to his spine, and finally, his eyes, his eyes, his eyes._

* * *

At Copley’s, Nicky untangles himself from Joe’s embrace as soon as he falls asleep. It’s far too easy to let himself stay there, held in the warmth of Joe’s arms, but Nicky has been denying himself for so long it comes as natural as breathing.

So instead, he holds an unlit cigarette between his fingers, watching Joe from across the room as the man rolls onto his stomach on the couch. In his other hand, Nicky is playing with a lighter, listening to the snick of the flame as he thumbs the button, then releases it again.

Everything Joe does is beautiful; grace imbued in his believer’s hands, in his artist’s hands – ones that create instead of destroying. His every movement, which dances along the edges of Nicolò’s awareness at all times, is an inferno in motion.

(How do you forgive a match for doing all it knows how to do? That vivid and fierce flame combusting into light, consuming itself up in its persistence and its perseverance, until the heat singes your fingers because you held onto it for far too long, you couldn’t take your eyes off the way it moved, wanted it to lick your skin and hoped that maybe the blisters would linger.

They don't; your flesh knits itself back together like a twisted miracle, but you will never forget that excruciating, radiant moment when you and the flame were the same. And you strike the firm tip against another empty matchbox; watch it explode, watch it rupture, watch it come to life – then watch it tremble, watch it choke, watch it lapse onto itself, like the passing of time without him.)

Yusuf is a man, not a flame; more constant than a flicker of light, more enduring than a forest fire. Still, Nicolò burns.

* * *

A day later, back at the Mississippi safehouse, Joe comes down the stairs looking dazed and a little lost. He's clutching one of his sketchbooks. Nicky frowns, watching him carefully for signs that he’s definitely _his_ Joe still.

And then Joe opens his mouth.

“This Joe from another reality,” he starts carefully, “did he- did he mention anything about where he was from?”

Nicky tries to rein in his panic, settling his features into one of innocent confusion. _Not much, just that apparently we love each other, and we’re married, and-_

“Nothing comes to mind,” he lies, “why is that?”

Joe just shakes his head, huffing a small laugh. He looks up at Nicky, staring so intently into his eyes that for a moment it feels like they’re on the precipice of something important, of beginning again.

And then Joe blinks, dropping his stare, and the moment is gone.

“Nothing,” he shrugs off, “just wondered if you were just as insufferable in his reality as you are in mine.”

Nicky’s relieved sigh is stifled by the sudden tightness in his chest. Outwardly, he rolls his eyes and retorts, “he seemed to suffer me just fine.”

Later, Joe is sketching in the living room, long fingers wrapped around a pencil, brows gently pinched in concentration. Nicky is by the window, reading. He keeps looking over at Joe, trying not to remember those fingers wrapped around his cock in Malta, his wrist at Merrick’s lab, the saif when it plunged into Nicky, all those years ago.

Nicky tears his eyes away and looks out the window. He stares and stares at the sun until halos of light burn behind his eyes when he closes them.

(In every life, Yusuf is the sun – but you were gifted only with waxed wings and a terrible fear of falling. In another life, your love is an eclipse, not a cautionary tale of hubris.)

* * *

He has already threatened to withhold his baklava for the rest of time to keep Andy from saying anything to Joe about the other reality. She’d looked at him, clearly judging the sincerity of his threat, before shaking her head.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

* * *

There’s a game on tonight. Joe has curled himself up on the couch, clearly trying - and failing - not to feel the absence of Booker next to him. It’s oddly quiet in the safehouse without them shouting over each other (the teams don’t matter; Joe will pick the one most likely to lose and then he’ll shout himself hoarse as they fail. But the rare times when they do win, he smiles so brilliantly it’s fucking blinding), and Nicky barely makes it to half time before he gives in and pours himself into the space next to Joe.

“200 on red,” he challenges. He can feel Joe’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t look away from the screen.

“You’re on, little shrike.”

Nicky doesn’t care enough to understand the mechanics of the game, and Joe’s too busy making terrible jokes out of the names on the player’s shirts to pay attention to who wins, but it doesn’t matter.

When Nicky goes to get up, Joe catches his wrist. Nicky swallows and stops, heart thudding in his chest as he waits for Joe to say something. Joe opens and then closes his mouth a few times, before he squeezes, once.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, eyes shining a little in the lamplight.

Nicky nods, and Joe relinquishes his hold on Nicky’s wrist.

(It burns, it burns, it burns.)

* * *

It becomes a regular thing. Joe will put on the game and Nicky will join him, and they’ll not watch it together. Sometimes Andy and Nile are there, sometimes they aren’t. When they aren’t, Joe will sit a little closer to Nicky, and Nicky will lean in further than is necessary to hear Joe explain what’s going on to him.

It’s easy to pretend that this is for Joe. That he’s just helping him feel less lonely without Booker.

It gets a little harder to pretend when he’s got Joe bent over the couch, fucking into him steadily with his cock.

“Fuck, Nicky, Nicky-” Joe gets out between gritted teeth.

“Shh, you have me,” Nicky hushes, running a hand down Joe’s spine, even as he drives into him harder.

_You have everything of me._

They shouldn’t be doing this, now. There are so many reasons this is a bad idea, the _least_ of them being that Nile and Andy could walk downstairs at any moment and catch them. But when Joe clenches around him and whines like he might die if Nicky stops, Nicky can’t bring himself to care.

Joe’s hands are clutching the sofa cushions, trying to hold onto something while Nicky pushes his body further into the couch with every thrust. He’s _so_ warm and tight around Nicky, and he keeps making these little noises that drive Nicky feral, makes him want to bury himself deep inside and never leave.

Before Nicky knows it, he’s close, snapping his hips to chase down his orgasm.

“Here, let me-” he adjusts his position, trying to reach between Joe and the couch to touch his cock.

But as he leans over, he hits Joe’s prostate dead-on and Joe _keens._ Nicky has to abort his mission from Joe’s cock to clamp his hand over Joe’s mouth as he moans again and shakes himself into an orgasm on just Nicky’s cock.

Joe’s teeth bite into his skin as he does and Nicky swears, coming hard inside him, hips twitching from the sheer intensity of it.

Breathing heavily, Nicky drops his head to rest between Joe’s shoulder blades while he recovers.

“We’re pretty good at that, huh?” Joe laughs, equally breathless.

Nicky can only hum in response, desperately trying to stop the panic clawing its way up his chest.

They don’t talk about it. They clean up, go back to their respective rooms and fall asleep alone.

But the next morning when Nicky gets to the kitchen, Joe has made him coffee. He offers the steaming cup to Nicky with a soft smile and Joe’s fingers brush his own as he takes it.

* * *

_Shrikes are one of the only songbirds that are also predators. Meaning, Nicky knows exactly where to strike Joe with his sword, so it hurts. Meaning, he is a shivering melody stuck inside a body that only knows how to butcher. Meaning, he is a shriek of loneliness, spiking his own heart on a thorn and watching it decay._

* * *

It goes on like this for two weeks. Throughout the day, they circle each other; Joe will brush up against him in the kitchen or place a hand on Nicky’s lower back as he walks past. But they don’t take it further, don’t even acknowledge it until Nile and Andy head back to their rooms. And then Nicky will bend Joe over some surface, always frantic, hushed. He doesn’t let Joe fuck him, can’t let himself be that vulnerable again.

Not that he has any control over the situation anyway. He can’t resist Joe for all that he’s trying to, and Joe’s not giving anything away, just takes Nicky’s bruising grip and his harsh thrusts and his fingers yanking on his hair like it’s all he’s ever wanted.

They’re walking an incredibly fine line, a taut string that could be a noose or a red thread of fate, circling around them tighter and tighter until it breaks.

* * *

Nicky has just returned from his morning shower when he enters his room to find Joe on the bed. He’s shaking a little, eyes very wide as Nicky closes the door.

He waits a beat, and Joe stands up, making his way over to Nicky.

“Nile said- she said that you and I were married, in this other reality,” he voices roughly, searching Nicky’s face urgently, like he wants Nicky to deny it, to tell him he didn’t _know._

Nicky says nothing, but mentally starts compiling an exhaustive list of ways to make Nile suffer for the next few hundred years.

His silence is enough confirmation for Joe, whose voice takes on a wounded edge as he asks, “why didn’t you tell me?”

Nicky shrugs, desperately trying to find something to look at other than Joe’s big eyes, “it didn’t seem important.”

Joe makes a funny noise, like something between exasperation and frustration. “Not important? Nicolò-”

“It changes _nothing._ What does it matter that there are other versions of ourselves that are together? We’re not them.” _I’m not him, and you deserve far better than me._

Joe doesn’t miss a beat, immediately replying, “ _versions?_ As in, more than one?”

Nicky closes his eyes tiredly, cursing himself. Joe won’t let this go anytime soon. He rubs the back of his neck and explains, “he might have mentioned something about some of the other realities he’d been to as well.”

“And in how many of them were we…?”

“All of them, apparently.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Nicky waits for him to comment on that, but Joe is just _looking_ at him, so Nicky tries to move past him, hoping to end the conversation before it can reach a point of no return.

Joe catches his wrist, and Nicky stops. Everything stops, even his breathing stops, as Joe’s finger swipes his pulse.

 _Damn you_ , Nicky thinks helplessly, a lump forming in his throat.

Nicky looks down at their hands, because if he looks up at Joe’s eyes he might not survive. Joe’s hand slips from his wrist to link with Nicky’s fingers _._

Huh. 900 years, and Nicky’s not sure he’s actually held Joe’s hand like this before. In his revelation, he forgets why he shouldn’t look up.

Joe’s staring at him in that way, like he did when he woke up at Merrick’s lab, like he did when he had Nicky up against the wall in Malta. It is a tender cleaving, but Nicky is broken open just the same.

Joe’s gaze drops to Nicky’s lips. It’s temptation incarnate. Nicky doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink. When Joe is so close Nicky can feel his uneven breath against his face, Nicky whispers, “ _don’t_. Please.”

Joe pulls back, stung.

“I don’t understand. This is us, Nicky. What about the last few weeks? How is this any different than it was a day ago, five minutes ago?”

It’s different because Nicky can’t pretend, anymore, that he can be casual about this. It’s different because if the universe wanted them to be together so fucking badly, why did it separate them? It’s different because Nicky _can’t let himself have this._

Joe must sense what he’s thinking because his grip on his hand tightens. “I _love_ you, Nicolò. Please, don’t run away from me again.”

Nicky shakes his head desperately, blindly reaching for the doorhandle behind him. He turns it, wrenching free from Joe’s grip, and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, sorry - I WILL fix them, guys. I promise. I just felt it needed to be earned, ya know? Or maybe I'm just evil, who knows.  
> Let me know what you thought of this part!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky only gets as far as the top of the stairs before he stops dead, adrenaline coursing through him with nowhere to go as the words come rushing back to him, unbidden. 
> 
> “Promise me that you’ll tell him.”

_A dissonant diptych:_

_A group of shrikes is called a watch; they will perch up high and await their prey before attacking._

_Like a sniper will watch and wait from a safe distance before firing on a target; or an archer,_

_poised on the walls of Jerusalem, watching and waiting before the arrow flies._

_Loving Nicolo is the same as losing him, most days – bruising._

_A gentle violence lingers in the coming and the going._

_It is a beautiful ache; an unmet prayer._

* * *

Nicky only gets as far as the top of the stairs before he stops dead, adrenaline coursing through him with nowhere to go as the words come rushing back to him, unbidden.

_“Promise me that you’ll tell him.”_

(See, guilt is more like a wound than a regret. The open kind, that sits between the two ribs on your left side where his weapon pierced you. The kind that festers; it is a harsh, serrated line.)

(When he left you in Jerusalem, it angered you.)

_“Tell him what?”_

(Sometimes it spreads to the back of your neck – this one is more like a brand that won’t fade, in the shape of his hand where his gentleness marked you, far sharper than his fury.)

(When he left you in Malta, it shattered you.)

_“That you love him, too.”_

(The one currently making its way into your throat is a tear, a split, a rupture. In the infected space it leaves are all the words you should have said to him but didn’t, shaped like _I love you, I love you, I love you_.)

(When he leaves you now-)

Nicky swears, and turns back around.

* * *

_Nicky has turned the words in his head over and over -_

_Turned them inside out, felt out their weight,_

_yet comes up each time, empty-handed._

_Joe has worn down his fingers, trying to capture Nicolo,_

_folded into the pages of a sketchbook, suspended in time._

_Fixed in place, but utterly unreachable._

* * *

Each unfettered step leads him back to the room; Nicky walks inside, as if in a daze, and shuts the door behind him. In a few quick strides, he’s in front of a softly stunned Joe, seated on the bed again. He’s just looking at Nicky, looking _through Nicky_ with those doe eyes that Nicky pretends he hates _._

In fact, Nicky is trying not to feel dissected under Joe’s gaze, like a specimen pinned against a board, a red string connecting all the broken, cowardly parts of himself together.

_Is this how it feels to_

_break open on something you’ve never known?_

_I have been breaking on you for a millennium._

It feels wrong having Joe look up at him this way, so he sinks to his knees and takes Joe’s unsteady, warm hands between his own. It’s a poor imitation of prayer, and Nicky is hundreds of years out of practice, yet it is humbling devotion shaking him apart as his eyes meet Joe’s again.

_(Is this how it feels-_

_-to be ruined with love?)_

“I don’t care whether we’re together in another reality, or whether we’re together in _all_ other realities. I don’t care because nothing, not even the universe itself, can tell me what you are to me.” Nicky swallows, tears burning in his eyes.

(He is _everything_ to you – he can bring you from shak to shirk with a single touch upon your gossamer skin. You were looking for resplendence at the gates of Jerusalem and you would have found it in his blood spilled against the marigold sand. He is the only being you would quake at the feet of, the only deliverance you care to earn.) 

In the end, it's as easy as breathing; he has been living with this love for so long it's become a part of him, tangled in the lines of his veins and filling up his lungs like the smoke left from his flame.

Nicky smiles shakily,

(and you are undone).

“I love you,” he exhales, “more than I know what to do with. I have loved you for longer than I can remember not loving you, like my very existence depends upon it. I’m sorry it took me this long to tell you.”

A beat passes, heavy with silence.

(You are waiting for him, and he is watching you; a loaded gun, a notched arrow - all your metaphors for love are weapons, because what's the difference between letting him love you and letting him kill you, really?)

Joe’s answering smile is the sun splitting open the grey sky. Then he leans down, and splits Nicky open with a kiss, pouring sunlit warmth into his bones.

(You are

_golden.)_

The world shifts, cracks open a little in order to make room for their love to take its place among the truths of the universe. 

Nicky drags himself up into Joe’s lap, drags his lips over Joe’s, drags his hand over Joe’s chest until his fingers are in his hair. He runs them gently through the soft curls and deepens their kiss. 

He is _consumed_ with love, with the heat of Joe’s hands on his body, and all of a sudden nothing is as important as getting as close to the flame as possible. Nicky pulls Joe’s shirt off of him, before tugging his own over his head, and then their bare chests are pressed together as they meet in another slide of lips.

Nicky has missed this; has spent countless nights dreaming of this, of Joe’s skin on his own, like an addict in remission. 

Joe pulls back and his eyes are incandescent when he jokes, “Here I thought I was going to have to get myself kidnapped again.”

Nicky reflexively tightens his hold on Joe’s hair. He kisses him - severe, intense, brief - before he replies lowly, “I won’t let anything happen to you,” against Joe’s lips.

Nicky runs his fingers along the dip next to Joe’s spine, feels the way he shivers.

“I’ve hurt you,” Nicky adds softly, regretfully tracing the invisible scar with his index finger.

Joe fits his own fingers in the divot of the ribcage on Nicky’s left side as he returns, "Just as I’ve hurt you.”

They’re talking about much more than a simple exchanging of wounds. But the kiss they share now tastes like forgiveness, like the first step in healing a very old bruise. 

Nicky drinks it up eagerly, baptises himself in it until he feels like he's been made new again. The next kiss is a promise that says _enough violence, now. My hands will lay only love upon your body from now on._

(It is its own miracle, to be soft and open, when all you’ve known is ruthlessness.)

And so it is with love that they undress each other, and it is with love that Joe sits between Nicky’s parted legs, and it is with love that Joe begins to open him up, steady and slow.

The first two fingers have Nicky trembling, or maybe it’s the adoration burning in Joe’s eyes looking down at him. He cants his hips up, tries to ask for more, but Yusuf simply runs a placating hand down his side, fingers following the dip of his hipbones.

“I didn’t get to take my time with you, in Malta. I plan to rectify that,” he says, leaning down to take one of Nicky’s nipples into his mouth.

His hand runs up Nicky’s thighs, massaging the crease of his groin, making him shiver.

“Please,” Nicky whispers, moaning when Joe responds by adding a third finger. The stretch is exquisite, the best kind of ache.

He urges Joe up so he can kiss him again, breaking it to moan into Joe’s mouth, which makes Joe press the hard line of his erection against Nicky’s hip. Nicky groans, running his hands along Joe’s broad shoulders; he is ravenous, greedy with the light of this love, of being able to touch Joe and be touched by him. This is _his,_ this is theirs, and it is just as devastating as he had feared.

(It’s okay; you are Icarus in this story, but he would never let you fall.)

When Joe sinks inside of Nicky, it is with barely contained tremors trailing across their intertwining bodies. Nicky keeps his eyes open so he can look at Joe as he carves out a space in Nicky’s body, as he unravels Nicky to his core.

(and how lovely this death is - so different from the first. You offer your soul up to him, and he makes his home here in you, just as it should be.)

Nicky has to take a steadying breath in. Has it ever felt quite like this? Not just fervent in how fucking good it feels, but so fragile too. He’s a knife’s edge away from coming already, and too far gone to register anything other than the fire licking his gut.

And Joe is loose limbed, looking sweetly down upon him, and when he shifts it startles a soft moan from Nicky. Joe pulls out, taking all that warmth with him, but he returns like a wave to the shore, a graceful roll of his hips and then Nicky is blessedly, wonderfully full again.

Nicky brushes his fingers on the back of Joe’s neck as their bodies separate and then collide again, bursting out along Nicky’s awareness, all of his nerve endings stroked by Joe’s cock inside of him. He gasps; Joe catches his mouth again before Nicky can catch his breath, kissing him until he’s dizzy and ungainly with it. Nicky grasps his neck a little firmer, caught in the overwhelming rhapsody of Joe’s unwavering attention.

“God, Nicky, _I love you_ ,” Joe groans helplessly when he pulls away. 

“I know,” Nicky sighs, closing his eyes against the shivery pleasure running up his spine.

It’s indulgent, but Joe’s more than earned the right to be. He’s taking his sweet, wicked time with Nicky and by god, Nicky is going to let him. 

Joe draws out, and when he returns this time, he brushes against Nicky’s prostate, and Nicky ignites. He becomes light, living and shuddering, coming apart in Joe’s arms. The slick slide of Joe’s cock is a throbbing, sweet tension between his thighs, taking him so very carefully apart with every thrust and putting all his pieces back together with his kisses.

Nicky clenches around the pressure inside of him as the pleasure rises and begins to crescendo, to crest. The movement of their bodies becomes less give and more _take, take, take_ as it descends into a fevered, clumsy mess of desire _._ Joe’s driving into him a little faster now, letting out breathless gasps, and its pushing Nicky that much further over the edge.

Thought becomes sensation, as Nicky is reduced to just a receptacle for Joe’s love and his blazing touch. Each brush of his skin and his cock feels like redemption; Nicky is breathing out Joe’s name like a prayer, and with each thrust Joe answers it.

When Nicky comes, choking on the way it punches itself out of him, Joe kisses him through it, before following Nicky into his own rapture.

(He would follow you anywhere you go.)

(He will stay wherever you are.)

* * *

When Nicky blinks awake next, the sun is spilling out onto the sheets in his room, falling across his body and his face. Joe is beside him, the long line of his body pressed against Nicky’s.

As Nicky comes fully into awareness, Joe strokes a hand along his face, thumbs swiping his mottled cheekbone.

“Maybe this other Joe had the right idea,” Joe murmurs to himself, gaze flicking between Nicky’s eyes.

Nicky smirks, quietly thrilled with the way Joe is touching him so casually, his pulse pounding a steady beat of _mine, mine, mine._

“You know he tried to kiss me?”

“Oh?” Joe responds distractedly, “how did that go?”

“I stabbed him.”

It startles a laugh from Joe, bright and stunning. Nicky’s heart stutters; he wants to taste that sound against Joe’s lips. Forever.

Joe leans in, kissing Nicky on the nose before whispering proudly, “that’s my little shrike.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this fic was so fun to write but also got away from me so quickly in terms of style and form. I hope you guys liked it, I really wanted to hit those dual perspectives to make it extra angsty before the sweetnesss. Let me know if you did!

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!  
> Come yell at me on [tumblr](https://peachpitandpomegranate.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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